The EAVI EMG/EEG Board: Hybrid physiological sensing

TL;DR

This paper introduces the EAVI EMG/EEG Board, a wireless, microcontroller-based device that captures and processes brain and muscle signals, bridging high-end biomedical equipment and DIY solutions for practical physiological computing applications.

Contribution

It presents a novel hybrid hardware design integrating specialized biosignal chips with a microcontroller for versatile, wireless bioelectrical signal acquisition and processing.

Findings

Successful multichannel EMG and single-channel EEG demonstration

Wireless communication via Bluetooth LE and USB integration

Application in neuro-diverse musicians and stage performances

Abstract

We present an update on the EAVI physiological interface, a wireless, microcontroller based hardware design for the acquisition of bioelectrical signals. The system has been updated to process electroencephalogram brain signals in addition to muscle electromyogram. The hardware/firmware system interfaces with host software carrying out feature extraction and signal processing. Recent advances in electronics have made physiological computing applications practical and feasible. However, there is a gap between high end biomedical equipment and consumer DIY solutions. The hardware design we present here bridges this gap, and combines a specialized biosignal acquisition chip mated with a general-purpose microcontroller. It is based on the Texas Instruments ADS129x family a single chip integrated solution for high quality biosignal amplification and digitization. It serves as analogue front end via programmable gain amplifiers to a 24bit delta-sigma analog-digital converter. The microcontroller is the STMicroelectronics STM32F427, a Cortex-M4 family microcontroller with floating point unit . In addition to EMG acquisition, the board includes a Kionix KX122 three-axis accelerometer. The TI and Kionix sensing chipts communicate with the ST microcontroller over an I2C digital serial bus. The board communicates with the host computer or rest of the music system wirelessly over Bluetooth LE 4.2 using an ST SPBTLE-1S transceiver. The board can also communicate over USB where it registers with the host as a class compliant audio and MIDI device. Audio and physiological signals are treated in the same signal processing chain using the OWL framework. The demo will show multichannel EMG, and single channel EEG. We call this hybridization ''ExG''. We will present documentation of the EAVI board used in the lab and on stage, in user studies with neuro-diverse musicians and trained instrumentalists, as well as in performance with the experimental all-female band, Chicks on Speed.